Did you want to be an astronaut when you grew up? We never did, and we’re actually surprised any kid could have such a dream given the way spacemen are portrayed in the movies. Sure, there are some heroes here and there, but generally filmmakers tend to show us astronauts who are lonely, depressed, confused, self-doubting, jealous, guilt-ridden or otherwise miserable (not to mention they often wind up dead).
Sam Rockwell plays the latest of these unhappy astronauts in Moon, fittingly directed by Duncan Jones, whose father, David Bowie, gave us a somewhat sad song about a man potentially lost in space (“Space Oddity”). As the sole (human) resident of a station on the dark side of the moon, able to communicate with his family only through taped video correspondence, it’s not surprising that Rockwell’s character isn’t a happy camper.
But his mood actually has less to do with his situation than it has to do with film tradition. As much as Moon is garnering rave reviews it is also being lightly criticized for being derivative. And the unhappy astronaut convention is one of the overly familiar elements Jones and screenwriter Nathan Parker employs. To illustrate some of the convention’s history, we’ve selected ten of the unhappiest astronauts ever put on the big screen.
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In addition to winning Best Picture (and seven other awards) at the Oscars last week, Slumdog Millionaire passed a major box office benchmark. It has now grossed more than $100 million in the U.S., which is pretty astonishing for a film with one-third of its dialogue in a foreign language. But is Slumdog’s popularity a one-shot in terms of its audience’s interest in India, or are moviegoers actually now more curious about the nation and its own films?
Some websites are simplifying the question of whether or not Slumdog will be a gateway film with polls asking if American moviegoers will now “go Bollywood” (40% of Cinematical readers flat out answered, “no.”), which is rather silly since Danny Boyle’s movie bears no resemblance to the majority of Bollywood pictures. In fact, Americans have in the past received far greater entry points into Indian cinema by way of films involving Anglo or NRI (non-resident Indian) protagonists directed by culturally bridging filmmakers (such as NRI helmers Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair and Gurinder Chadha), than the more-touristy type of filmmaking represented with Slumdog.
If someone truly wants to become familiar with Bollywood, he or she should probably just jump right in and then patiently get used to the style, which can be quite difficult for Westerners to immediately grasp. The extremely interested might benefit from reading the section on popular Indian cinema in Dimitris Eleftheriotis and Gary Needham’s Asian Cinemas: A Reader & Guide, a book that does a really great job acquainting the Western spectator with Eastern film form. Or, the more casually curious cinephile could simply follow our guide to accessible Indian (or India-based) films for the Slumdog lover to watch next:
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Ratings were up 10% from last year, and polls indicate that viewers of the Oscars last night mostly enjoyed the telecast and would like Hugh Jackman back to host next year. So why am I still harping on the negatives? Well, no matter how many entertaining elements of the ceremony people remind me of, I have to argue that while the awards themselves were great, the television show was not. And unfortunately, I was not inside the Kodak auditorium where I might have better appreciated the things we all at home should have been able to appreciate. And anything I found entertaining from where I sat in my apartment was pretty much thanks to talented presenters and winners, such as Philippe Petit, Tina Fey, Janusz Kaminski, Dustin Lance Black, Kunio Kato and Danny Boyle.
And I’m not the only one who has complaints. Below you’ll find some criticisms from bloggers who either thought the show was completely terrible or thought it was mostly good with only a few minor gripes.
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With Danny Boyle’s DGA win over the weekend, Slumdog Millionaire achieved a near-impossible feat; it became even more favored to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Once thought to be an underdog, Slumdog has been pretty much unstoppable throughout the awards season, even picking up the undeserved top honor at the SAG Awards, and has never fallen from its position of frontrunner since it took the lead months ago. Yet last week, the internet was populated by talk of a Slumdog backlash, and for the first time in weeks, other Best Picture candidates were seriously being discussed as slightly plausible victors. The two titles considered most likely to be a threat to Boyle’s film are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Milk, with little concern for either Frost/Nixon or The Reader. However, while the former candidate is probably a sure thing to lose, the latter film should not yet be dismissed.
Before the Academy Award nominations were announced last month, The Reader wasn’t even thought to be a contender for any major category except Best Supporting Actress. Now, among its five nominations, it’s up for three higher-tiered Oscars, including Best Picture. So, we can’t rightly continue underestimating its potential. This isn’t to say that we are predicting The Reader to win Best Picture; Slumdog is still the safest bet for the top prize. But odds for The Reader do need to be adjusted, as its chances are a lot closer to, if not better than, secondary favorites Benjamin Button and Milk. Of course, as the it stands now, the film should be an appealing choice for any gamblers out there, because a surprise Best Picture win for The Reader would pay out big time. So, our immediate apologies to betters if the following seven factors have any influence on professional oddsmakers out there.
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We’ve never been big fans of Slumdog Millionaire here at the SpoutBlog. Kevin Buist was first underwhelmed with Danny Boyle’s hyperactive Mumbai game show movie at Telluride, where he called it “hectic and sloppy, especially considering the rigid and somewhat boring structure upon which the film is built,” and noting that the love story in particular was “sorely lacking.”
When we re-posted this review around the time of the film’s general release, commenters started attacking Kevin right away. “i think you have no knowledge of being a movie reviewer,” ‘prady‘ wrote. “Just watch the movie and its great.You might have some problem,contact your doctor soon.” And ‘clearly’ had a number of questions: “um, Kevin, really? Why are you qualified to write reviews.. perhaps another line of work for ya? Rigid and boring structure? are you blind, ignorant or just stupid?” The onslaught became so much that Kevin responded and defended his position on an episode of FilmCouch.
But after the film’s Golden Globes sweep (see the full list of its wins at the newly re-designed indieWIRE) last night, that review began to attract some very different comments.
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Boyle. Fincher. Howard. Nolan. Van Sant. No alarms, no surprises. indieWIRE has the historical analysis that reminds us that last year, the DGA nominated Sean Penn for Into the Wild and the Academy swapped him out for Jason Reitman, but, you know … unless whatshername who was fired from Twilight makes a big surge super quick, it seems unlikely that anyone’s going to get an Oscar nomination this year for nabbing $100 million+ of teenage girl allowance. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say the Best Director Oscar nominations will probably look a lot like this.
It’s starting to look like early predictions that Slumdog Millionaire would be the Juno of 2008 were wrong: Juno, though a massive box office hit and an eventual Best Picture nominee, wasn’t selected as the Best Film of its year by a single critics group, an honor which Danny Boyle’s film has landed several times in the last week alone. Though excluded from AFI’s list of the Top Ten films of 2008 (it’s possible that Wendy and Lucy took its place — and if so, awesome), Slumdog was given top honors by the New York Film Critics Online (which I just joined, although I won’t be eligible to vote until next year), the Boston Society of Film Critics, and the National Board of Review (not purely critics, but often treated as such). The Los Angeles critics gave Danny Boyle Best Director, and most surprising (to me, anyway), the New York Film Critics Circle cited Slumdog’s cinematographer, Anthony Dod-Mantle, over Harris Savides, who shot their #1 film, Milk.
So what does it all mean?!? None of these groups have a particularly fool-proof track record when it comes to predicting Oscar glory, but the blanket of praise for Slumdog seems to have already lent the film an air of inevitability in a year otherwise lacking in films that everyone can get behind. Which is annoying for those of us who think Slumdog is a servicable crowd-pleaser which has been way over-praised. Which would mean that it *is* Juno 2, after all.
Harrison Ford’s newest movie Crossing Over opens this weekend may never open ever (see comments below — Ed.) and it looks like a mashup of Babel and Crash. In the trailer, Ford seems to be going through the motions of a role we’ve become used to seeing him in: the gruff older man who gets angry about something and decides to take matters into his own hands. It’s most reminiscent of his Jack Ryan character in Clear and Present Danger, right down to shots that look pretty darn close to each other.
It’s more of a reminder that so many of Harrison Ford’s films in these past few years have fallen flat on their face both with audiences and at the box office. He tried to do comedy with Anne Heche in Six Days, Seven Nights, and again with Josh Hartnett in Hollywood Homicide. Neither one of them worked. He also missed with the romantic drama Random Hearts and the drama/actioner K19: The Widowmaker. There was brief respite from his lackluster roles with What Lies Beneath, but then he turned to mediocrity with Firewall. Then came the new Indy, which granted, wasn’t his fault. He was great it in, but the writing was just too bad to get past.
Crossing Over doesn’t look like it’ll bust Ford out of the boring movie mold he’s encased in, so here are some suggestions for him to turn things around. Despite the fact that this guy could retire tomorrow and live off of his earnings forever, he seems intent on continuing to act. Let’s hope he pays attention.
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A few episodes ago, we talked about Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. We had a few bones to pick with hyper-paced indie romance, some of which caused us to question the value of Boyle’s cannon. As we should have expected, a few listeners were not happy with us dogging the feel-good, rags-to-riches, out-of-left-field Oscar contender of the year.
Meanwhile, Karina has written a less than favorable review of the forthcoming David Fincher film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Again, a wave of backlash has ensued.
Are we simply spiteful film snobs who love ripping on movies while they ride a wave of buzz into awards season? No. We love movies. But sometimes that love must be tough. On this week’s show we clarify a few positions, navigate the tricky waters of blogosphere backlash, and search for what Werner Herzog calls “adequate images.”
FilmCouch 98 [42:44m]:
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Download
(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)
0:00 - Intro, the ideal Thanksgiving
7:56 - Slumdog backlash, It’s a Wonderful Life, Casablanca
24:41 - Karina on Benjamin Button
filmcouch-98
Catherine Hardwicke hit one out of the park for female directors this past weekend, but she had a lot of help. Not only was she working with a pre-sold property, she also had a very manageable budget of $37 million. Quite different from the $2 million she had to work with on Thirteen a few years back. Of course, she had similar budgets on Lords of Dogtown ($25 million) and The Nativity Story ($35 million), and both were box office disappointments. Still, she’s going to keep on being trusted with more money — if Summit is smart they’ll keep her on for at least the first Twilight sequel, which will surely come with a higher price tag — and as long as she continues with genre films, she’s sure to remain a profitable director.
Not every talented filmmaker does well with more money. Danny Boyle, for instance, typically bombs with bigger budgets. And a lot of foreign auteurs strike out when handed costly studio-produced genre or franchise pics (Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection is a favorite example). But there’s the occasional filmmaker who, like Steven Soderbergh or Christopher Nolan, can make something worthwhile out of any budget they’re allotted. And then there are the many indie filmmakers who quickly find themselves at home with modestly priced broad comedies, such as the case with Seth Gordon easily transitioning from the Slamdance doc The King of Kong to the star-studded Hollywood holiday pic Four Christmases, out this week.
Who will be the next small-scale filmmaker to successfully rise up and prove him or herself worthy of bigger budgets? SpoutBlog has selected five directors we’d like to see given an economic boost, each because he or she would likely deliver something more interesting and popular than the usual Hollywood product.
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Danny Boyle’s latest, Slumdog Millionaire, hit theaters this week. The whimsical up-tempo romance is quickly becoming a critical darling, with decent prospects for awards season. The funny thing is, we hated it. We take a look back at Boyle’s work, specifically A Life Less Ordinary. That film, far from a critical darling, has essentially the same core belief as Slumdog, that the combination of love, destiny, and tons of money will never let you down.
Karina offers more sobering commentary on the fallacies of the typical on-screen romance by comparing An Affair to Remember and When Harry Met Sally with Casablanca. She also praises a new French film with parallels to The Royal Tenenbaums, called A Christmas Tale.
As mentioned in the podcast, if you’d like to chime in on the Slumdog Millionaire debate, head to the FilmCouch Group.
FilmCouch 96 [37:40m]:
Play Now |
Download
(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)
0:00 - Intro
2:51 - Slumdog Millionaire, A Life Less Ordinary
20:09 - Karina on three classic romances, A Christmas Tale, Barackula
filmcouch-96
Danny Boyle’s new crowd-pleasing film Slumdog Millionaire was originally intended to be shot entirely in English, but apparently due to the preferences of a casting director, about a third of the movie is in Hindi. While this fraction may not be enough to call it a foreign-language film, it could have been enough to turn off subtitle-fearing audiences were the movie not so otherwise accessible due to its feel-good, “Hollywood-style” story involving star-crossed romance, destiny and an ultimate “love conquers all” message. Also, the movie breaks free from one off-putting foreign film tradition by following Man on Fire, Night Watch and TV’s Heroes into the realm of non-traditional subtitling.
Slumdog received a standing ovation at the Toronto Film Festival, where it won the People’s Choice Award, and it could very well extend its popularity in the direction of the multiplex crowd. If it’s a hit with moviegoers who aren’t typically open to world cinema, this could be the chance for similarly feel-good foreign films to cross over and reach a wider audience, whether they be upcoming releases like the Sundance-winning Captain Abu Raed or titles from the past that could always use more Netflix-queue love.
And so, in the hopes that Slumdog could help open the door to further foreign film consumption, SpoutBlog presents this guide to the most accessible world cinema titles from the past ten years. For every entry-level film on the list, we name a couple of more intermediate titled in the same vein — just in case you get hooked.
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Money makes the world go round, and it also drives the plot most of the films of Danny Boyle. Slumdog Millionaire, as you can guess by the title, is no different. It greases the wheels of Boyle’s plots, and forces characters to do things they wouldn’t otherwise even consider. Unfortunately cash doesn’t really play a part in 28 Days Later or Sunshine, probably because zombies don’t really shop that often, and the Sun doesn’t take credit cards, but every one of his other films has a pile of money at the heart of the story. …Read more
This review originally appeared during the Telluride Film Festival. Slumdog Millionaire opens in select markets tomorrow.
Danny Boyle’s latest offering, Slumdog Millionaire, is generating a fair amount of buzz here at Telluride. Not unlike last year’s Juno, the film showed up in one of the mysterious TBA slots, delighting audiences made weary by a slate of good but somewhat depressing films, such as Hunger, Waltz with Bashir and Adam Resurrected. Slumdog Millionaire follows the story of Jamal Malik, an unlikely winner of India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Jamal, his brother Samir, and fellow orphan Latika, manage to survive an almost absurd number of scrapes, the memory of each one coincidentally providing Jamal with answers to the game show questions. The film is big, fast, fun, and colorful, but ultimately a mess.
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